


Ad Astra Per Aspera

by Origami_Breath



Series: Billdipweek2017: Halloween Prompts [6]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: BillDipWeek2017, Dark Dipper Pines, Halloween Prompts, M/M, Older Dipper Pines, Triangle Bill Cipher, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 09:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12651069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origami_Breath/pseuds/Origami_Breath
Summary: After that summer， Dipper realizes that he can’t go back to Gravity Falls. Not without Bill.





	Ad Astra Per Aspera

It has been 15 years since Dipper was back in Gravity Falls. When he remembered holding the farewell card from everybody there close to his chest, Wendy’s hat on his head, and Mabel falling asleep on his shoulder. He remembers flipping it over and feeling a rush of excitement at the idea of a brand new summer and a completeness to being a whole 13 years of age.

Now at 28, he feels none of that.

He couldn’t understand why he wanted to be 13 so badly. Couldn’t understand, within 2 months of his regular school in California, why he’d want to go back to Gravity Falls.

***

Having that time away from the paranormal and the supernatural and all of the everyday crisis gave him time to reflect. A forced reflection that his body springs on him in a time of calm and peace, nothing in his head blocking out the trauma now that he knows tomorrow will be him, waking up at 6 am to the smell of breakfast and his parents arguing and a heavy weight of a textbook he fell asleep reading on his chest.

He can remember the exact moment that it all hits him, the moment his mind breaks. He cries.

He cries himself to sleep most nights and has night terrors the other nights he sleeps too long. He dreams of floating eye balls and everybody he loved turning into stone and Grunkle Stan forgetting them forever.

He mostly dreams of Bill.

Bill was a large, tiered monster with long arms that dug into the ground, tongues hanging out where tongue shouldn’t be and the one eye that saw everything. He chased Dipper through every dream and Dipper would wake up screaming because Bill was a  _dream demon_. Every time Bill showed up in his memories he felt that pulsing fear that Bill was back and followed him home to California.

His night terrors get so bad that Mabel was moved into her own room, being unable to stand being woken up by Dipper’s terrifying screaming while they both had high school the next day.

Mabel was growing up and she didn’t want to be reminded of the terrors of Gravity Falls. She just wanted to know that she had friends there and that everything was going to be a good summer again. That maybe she’d be able to find a vampire boyfriend this time around. - all this did was make Dipper think of a vampire sucking Mabel dry and then leaving her bloodless corpse on the front porch.

He screamed his throat raw by the time the next summer came around.

He was too scared to get on the bus back to Gravity Falls.

His parents understood a little too well, agreed to let him go to therapy. Obviously went through too much in the Mystery Shack. Maybe saw too many scary movies or read too many legends that did a 180 on his young, impressionable mind. He can only be grateful that Mabel wasn’t mad, just hugged him tight and made him promise that he’d try to be better by the end of the summer.

He promised.

So he went to therapy and the therapist had him write down all of his dreams in a dream journal.

Immediately his therapist took a weird fascination with Bill and asked why Dipper thought that Bill was a recurring factor. Dipper couldn’t very well reveal that Bill was an actual dream demon who almost destroyed the entire universe as they know it. So he says that Bill was a friend, somebody who hurt him.

The therapist takes this wrong. And Dipper, when looking back on this, can see why.

She thinks that Bill was a boyfriend. Asks Dipper if Bill hit him, mentally manipulated him, etc. Dipper says yes to it all because Bill did hit him, he did manipulate him, he stabbed him with forks, he possessed him, poured carbonated soda into his  _retinas_. So his therapist suggests he write a note to Bill. Tell Bill that he forgives him but refuses to be effected.

Dipper spends all night not sleeping, chewing on pen after pen.

You don’t forgive a demon.

But he writes a note, and he sleeps and he has a night terror. But Bill isn’t in it.

He remembers this dream vividly because he’s waiting for the werewolf to stop gnawing on his leg. He waits for Bill to scare the wolf off and try to rip off Dipper’s limbs. Usually he likes to start with his arms. But Bill doesn’t come and the werewolf ends up eating Dipper whole. It’s a long process.

He wakes up, not screaming, but sweaty and out of breath. His body shakes and he feels the phantom edges of the teeth on his legs.

He tells his therapist that Bill was absent in his most recent dream - he avoids the word nightmare, simply because they’re the only things he sees when he closes his eyes - and she seems happy. Dipper just feels a vacancy and his anxiety spikes high enough that he feels light headed and short of breath.

He goes to bed early and hopes that Bill will show up. Doesn’t know why yet, but he hopes.

Instead the eye turns him to stone and Grunkle Stan forgets who he is and walks off into the forest with Mabel, leaving Dipper alone, cold, and unable to move. Dipper waits for Bill to show up, to make him a person again just so he can possess him and stab him repeatedly.

Instead Dipper wakes up in a cold sweat with heavy limbs and an ache in his ribs from gasping too hard.

Dipper burns the letter to Bill and tells his therapist that the nightmares are worse because they are. She wonders if Bill came back. Dipper says no. Can’t confess that, in a way, Bill saves him from all the other horrors. That Bill’s manipulation and torture is familiar and Dipper already learned all of the pains and aches to the point it doesn’t really hurt anymore. He can’t remember when it stopped hurting.

And so it goes.

His therapist and his parents think he had a boyfriend - or just a very close ‘friend’ - who abused him. Dipper doesn’t say otherwise and avoids going to Gravity Falls every summer. Is afraid that Bill might not show up in his dreams when he goes. They did destroy him there after all. Maybe everybody gets to forget him there.

Dipper is too afraid to forget him.

***

But at 28 he thinks that maybe he should stop living in fear. So he goes to Gravity Falls alone, after summer ends. Doesn’t tell Mabel, his parents, Grunkle Stan or Great Uncle Ford. He goes on a bus and has it drop him off on the side of the road by the thickest part of the woods.

Then he lets his feet take him to a spot that he only dreams of.

In the thickest, untouched part of the forest, embedded in the earth, will be a cemented creation of Bill at his simplest form. And Dipper needs to see it. Touch it.

So he lets his feet carry him, eyes to the sky and gloved fingers grazing every passing tree. There’s not a single doubt in his mind about where he will end up. He knows, that even though Bill has been defeated, that there’s no way for him to presently fuck around with Dipper’s head, Bill is guiding Dipper. He doesn’t know how or even why, but he can only guess that Bill feels the connection and is doing the only thing he can.

Guiding Dipper.

It takes only about an hour of walking before he sees it, hand stretched to the air and a crack in the middle of the single eye, the stars light reflecting off the clean, untouched surface.

He feels something inside him squeeze. Bill, as he suspected, is as unthreatening as he will ever be. But Dipper still gets a thrill of something. The urge to do anything to get rid of the high feeling of anxiety and PTSD that he’s had to live with while growing up. He knows that he’ll find that closure here. With Bill.

Stepping closer he takes a deep breath and uses his teeth to take his glove off while reaching out for Bill’s cemented hand in the same movement.

Dipper hovers there, his fingertips barely grazing the edge of Bill’s.

He could go back.

He’s here for a reason, and that reason is definitely not of his own desire.

Fuck it.

He closes the distance, feels the rough, oddly warm texture and keeps it there. Just touching. He keeps the contact and circles slowly, a skip to his step when he feels the rush of adrenaline coursing through him.

Soon enough he’s swinging his hips, other hand resting on the smooth line of Bill’s side, thumb rubbing against the surface slowly.

And it clicks, his anxiety, his fear, everything he grew up with that brewed constantly in his head settles to a quiet and it’s just him, Bill, and the moon. For the first time he’s content and he lets himself close his eyes, lets himself imagine the real Bill that he sees so much in his dreams at home.

He sways and sways, a hysterical laugh building up until he’s got his head thrown back towards the sky, laughing and dancing with the monster that single handedly ruined him.

He’s never been happier.


End file.
